Dear Bearpaw,
I'm going to try to email/write you through step 4 of Fons and Porter's directions because I recently made some continuous binding and had just ONE part where I needed to rip it out. Here goes....
- After step 3, you should visualize stitching this trapezoid looking shape of fabric into a fabric tube.
-One thing that helped me was to press back 1/4 inch seam allowance on one of the shorter edges. Gently press it toward the drawn lines, which is the wrong side of the fabric. I say to do this for just one edge because it really helped me place the pins correctly later on.
-Put the two short edges together, first with the lines that you have drawn matching up perfectly (we're going to move this in a minute). You should be holding the fabric like a tube now. Imagine if you sewed it like this and then cut on the drawn lines, you would be cutting out individual rings of bias binding: that's not what you want.
-Now, you are holding this fabric in a tube shape, then you slide one short edge of the fabric so that the first line (on either top or bottom) hangs free. Start matching the drawn lines on one short edge of your fabric with the second line of the other edge.
-This is where the pins and the 1/4 inch seam allowance come in. Pin with the right sides of the fabric together, perpendicular to the short edge of the fabric, so that the 1/4 inch seam allowance is toward you (up and fully visible). Take a peek that you are lining things up correctly by flattening the fabric out so that you can see that line one from the first edge of fabric matches up to line two of the second edge of your tube (line two from the first edge matches to line three of the second edge, and so on). It is CORRECT that you will have the first line of the first edge of fabric dangling free and that you will run out of lines to match by the very end, so there is another dangling edge at the end too.
-Now that it is pinned correctly (It really looks wrong at this point, but you should continue anyway), you should sew the pinned edge together with a 1/4 inch seam allowance. It is actually very little sewing, but a considerable amount of prep work.
-Now for cutting, which is step 5 of the Fons and Porter directions...start where the first line is dangling free and cut on the drawn line, all the way until you run out of line/fabric. You will know right away if you have done this correctly because you will either be able to continue cutting on the line all the way to the end of the fabric or you will have cut yourself a ring of bias (I did that.).
-My last piece of advice, when you have successfully cut out this long strip of continuous bias binding, is to press each seam open in order to have a very flat binding.
Best of luck.
-Christine